Tag Archives: women

When we remember the birth control movement, we must commemorate the extraordinary women who willingly risked so much for the advancement of such a controversial movement. For these activists, giving all women new access and opportunities to contraceptives meant more than their own potential individual advancements. Dr. Hannah Mayer Stone embodied this type of dedication. Chosen by Margaret Sanger in 1925 to be the head physician of the Clinical Research Bureau, Dr. Hannah Stone would prove to be dedicated not just to the cause, but also to the over 100,000 patients she saw during her time at the clinic.

Hannah M. Stone

While she defied the norm with her passionate involvement with the movement, Dr. Hannah Stone surpassed traditional 20th century women’s roles all her life. Born in New York City in 1893 as the daughter of a pharmacist, she went on to receive a degree in pharmacy from Brooklyn College in 1912. Following this, she attended New York Medical school, receiving her MD in 1920. In 1921, she attended the first American Birth Control Conference, where she met Margaret Sanger. Sanger opened the Clinical Research Bureau in 1923, and two years later she needed a new physician.Dr. Stone was already a member of the medical advisory board for the Clinical Research Bureau when Margaret Sanger offered her the position of physician. As she had this prior involvement, her interest in the birth control movement was known. Dr. Hannah Stone would work at the Clinical Research Bureau, which was later renamed Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in 1928, for 16 years without receiving compensation.

The main purpose behind the establishment of the Clinical Research Bureau was to do more than just administer birth control to patients; it was to also prove the effectiveness of different types of contraceptives through detailed record keeping. Dr. Stone handled both tasks methodically. By the end of her time at the clinic in 1941, she had helped over 100,000 patients and she had maintained a record for each one. But aside from just being thorough, Dr. Stone was compassionate and understanding with her patients. Her demeanor led her become known as the “Madonna of the Clinic.” In her writing, Sanger expressed her adoration of Dr. Stone. She commented on her attributes, listing “her infinite patience, her attention to details, her understanding of human frailties, her sympathy, her gentleness” as reasons that she was invaluable to the work of the clinic. Dr. Stone understood the value of her work at the clinic, not just in her interactions with patients, but also with her responsibility of compiling data about her patients. During her 16 years of service to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, Dr. Hannah Stone was able to leave a profound impact. Her detailed records helped the movement discover that the most effective method of birth control was the diaphragm used with spermicide. She later published some of her findings in “Therapeutic Contraceptives.” This article was one of the first involving birth control to be published within a medical journal.

Her passion for helping women extended past the realm of birth control. Dr. Stone and her husband, Dr. Abraham Stone counseled couples with relationship and sexual problems from within the clinic as well. This began casually, but it developed into the more formal Marriage Consultation Center which was ran out of the clinic and a community church. Through this work Dr. Stone again acted as a trailblazer, as these marriage counseling sessions had not been done in this manner before. In 1935, Dr. Stone and her husband were able to publish their counseling techniques in a book entitled A Marriage Manual.

Dr. Stone’s association with birth control often caused her to put the movement’s progression ahead of her own career, as her work at the clinic cost her many opportunities. She had been working at the Women’s Lying-In Hospital when she first started to work for Margaret Sanger at the Research Bureau Clinic. Her new work at the clinic caused a conflict with her the Women’s Hospital and they asked her to give up her newly acquired position. She refused this request, and as a result she was asked to resign from the Women’s Lying-In Hospital. This would only be the first of many times where her work at the clinic would prove to be a detriment to her career. Later, in 1929, Dr. Stone was arrested with four others when the Research Bureau Clinic was raided. Although the charges that were brought against her were later dismissed, the picture that was taken of her in handcuffs permanently damaged her record. Dr. Stone felt the full impact of this when she applied to admission to the New York Medical Society in 1932, and her application was tabled. She continued to take risks for the movement, including her involvement with the test case US v. One Package, when a package of Japanese pessaries were shipped to her and later seized. This case ended up being monumental, as it was the first step in legalized birth control. Despite her involvement with the birth control movement, and the clinic itself proving to be a detriment to the furthering of her medical career, Dr. Stone’s dedication to the cause never faltered.

Dr. Hannah Stone died suddenly of a heart attack in 1942 at the age of 48. Her loss was deeply felt at the clinic, as she had dedicated so much of her time to assisting the patients. She was replaced by her husband, who carried on her legacy and dedication to the cause. Dr. Stone is remembered for her kindness, and her groundbreaking work. She was well respected for her tremendous knowledge on administering effective contraceptives. Thousands of medical students and doctors alike came to the Research Bureau Clinic to learn her methods. Even though Dr. Stone was recognized for her greatness, Margaret Sanger wrote extensively on her humility. She did not crave attention or recognition, and often others took responsibility for her advancements.

As a doctor, Hannah Stone was a trailblazer. As a woman, she exceeded the expectations society had for her at the time. But it is her selflessness that is most inspiring. Dr. Hannah Stone dedicated nearly her entire career to serving women and the birth control movement, and despite her vast achievements she never sought recognition for them.

As one of the loudest voices in the early Birth Control Movement and the founder of what is now Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger was arguably one of the 20th century’s most influential champions of women’s rights. Thus, it may come as a surprise to people that she had several issues with the woman’s suffrage movement. Looking at some of Sanger’s earlier publications, one can see why Sanger and other early birth control advocates did not always see eye to eye with the Women’s Suffrage Party.

In her 1911 article “Dirt, Smell and Sweat,” Sanger recounts a meeting of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party. At the time, the organization was seeking a state-wide referendum on women’s suffrage. Anna Ross Weeks, the chairperson of the meeting, spoke of the men who oppose women’s voting because they “would be obliged to bump against the dirty, smelly and sweaty men at the polls.” Mrs. Weeks replied to this objection with the suggestion of removing “the dirty, smelling, sweaty men from the polls.” In response, Sanger writes,

But what about the women who are liable to be just as dirty, smelly and sweaty as their working brothers? Are they, too, to be removed? Dirt is dirt, smell is smell, and sweat is sweat, no matter on whom these unfortunate afflictions happen to be. And if the chairman and her class object to the smell of the workingman, so will they object to the smell of the working woman.

As this quote illustrates, Sanger was distrustful of the Women’s Suffrage Party because they ignored the concerns of working class women far too often. This middle class bias in the suffrage movement existed for years; many suffragists even employed tactics to demonize the poor. For example, in 1894, the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt spoke about the danger she believed immigrants posed to American wealth:

Poor, black, and immigrant women were consequently alienated from the suffrage movement.

Also, unlike many of the wealthy women in the suffrage movement, working class women had more immediate concerns, such as fair wages and access to birth control. In fact, with the extent to which the working class was plagued by infant and maternal mortality rates, access to birth control became a question of life or death. Even when women and children survived childbirth, the problems did not subside. Many working class families had no choice but to send their children to work, exposing them to hazardous conditions and long hours.

For Sanger, all of these issues were intertwined. She called attention to the class issues inherent in the birth control movement when she wrote,

Thus, birth control provided working class women with agency over their own bodies within a sexual context, as well as within a system that exploited their labor and the labor of their children. For working class women, gaining that level of agency took precedence over the political freedom that came with voting. Margaret Sanger understood that the stakes were high for these women and she was committed to fighting for them. Ultimately, the Women’s Suffrage Party’s lack of an intersectional approach prevented them from understanding the dirt, smell, and sweat of working class women.

Although we at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project like to believe that women are important every day of the year, it is on March 8th that it is socially acceptable to tell this to the world with multiple exclamation points!!! And so, we wish to say to you, in underlined, bold, capital letters, HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!!

Each International Women’s Day is different. I like to believe that it is because each of us has grown in our own special way since last March 8th, but more literally it is because every International Women’s Day has its own theme declared by the United Nations. While each one is empowering, the themes give women and men alike a time to reflect on ways in which to make the world around them a better place. 2012 urged Empowerment to Rural Women and ending poverty and hunger, while 2013 called for an end to violence against women. 2014’s theme, however, is especially close to our hearts in that the United Nations urges us this year to Inspire Change.

At the 2009 Winter X Games, Burke of Whistler, British Columbia, poses with her gold medal after winning the women’s skiing superpipe at Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, Colo.

While a slightly general topic, inspiring change means something different to everyone with a dream. Remembering the Sochi Winter Olympics, Sarah Burke comes to mind as a woman who devoted her whole life to change. She successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee into adding the ski halfpipe event for men and women to the 2014 winter games schedule. Though she passed away due to an accidental fall during a practice, Burke, a four-time Winter X Games gold medalist, was considered a shoe-in for a medal at Sochi. Although gone from our physical lives, Burke will always be remembered in her dedication to advocating her passion.

There is no question that Margaret Sanger also had that passionate devotion for her cause of inspiring change. Sanger risked enormous fines, substantial time in jail, and the separation from her family for extensive periods of time for the chance to give women the information she knew they needed and deserved. The amount ground Sanger covered is tremendous enough – not only did she travel throughout the United States and Canada, but she also traversed Europe and Asia to reach the most remote pockets of people she could find. And those people responded to her with open arms and an outpouring of gratitude.

Sanger prepares to speak in front of the Senate, 1934

But Sanger would be nothing if only a world traveler. Not only did she speak around the world, but she challenged the American government’s laws that blocked her path in the first place. Sanger testified often before Senate committees about changing the Comstock Law, section 211 of the U.S. Penal Code, which made it so difficult for women to obtain even the smallest amount of information about contraceptives. After a so many failed efforts to win legislative change, Sanger and her team turned to the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit for a judicial victory. In U.S. v. One Package Containing 120, more or less, Rubber Pessaries to Prevent Conception (U.S. v. One Package), Sanger and Hannah Stone, one of her clinic physicians, orchestrated a package delivery of a box of pessaries, another word for diaphragms, to be sent from Japan to Hannah Stone. Sanger and Stone informed the U.S. government about the delivery, and because at this time not even physicians were allowed to receive contraception by mail a lawsuit was created. Through years of battles, the suit traveled all the way to the Supreme Court, where Sanger and Stone won the right for physicians to receive contraception information and devices through the mail. Although the Supreme Court decision was not made until 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut to grant the right to privacy to married couples and their contraceptive uses, Sanger was able to see her dream realized before her death a year later.

Sanger’s influence stayed with women long after her death. In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) the Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that laws limiting contraceptive use to married couples was discriminatory, and that all people should have equal access to birth control. From Justice Brennan’s majority ruling: “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

This International Women’s Day challenges you to do something that inspires change. Whether it is a small change, like drinking water rather than soda to improve health, or a bigger change, like lobbying for a new Olympic sport or a change in the federal law, each change in the direction of improvement is a change worth working toward.

Margaret Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review in 1917 as a means to help build a birth control movement. By 1921 the monthly journal had become the official organ of the American Birth Control League, and included news of birth control activities, articles by scholars, activists, and writers on birth control, and reviews of books and other publications. The Review even included art and fiction in the form of cartoons, poetry and short stories.

Karla K. Gower and Vanessa Murphree recently published “Making Birth Control Respectable” in American Journalism, an article that looked at underlying messages about eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism (overpopulation) found in the Review.

To understand how eugenics and population were treated by the Review, it is important to understand the context in which the journal appeared. Gower and Murprhee argue that the topic of birth control was not publicly acceptable in the 1920s. Anything that related to reproduction was thought to belong in the private sphere. Public discussion of such matters made people uncomfortable. The Gower and Murphree argue that women were “relegated to the home” and were expected to uphold the virtues of the cult of domesticity–piety, purity, submission and domesticity.[1] Thus, birth control was seen as taboo.

Mailing information about birth control was also illegal, thanks to the 1873 Comstock Act, which made it a federal offense to send information about contraceptives in the mail. The Comstock Act also inspired states to further criminalize birth control. Gower and Murphree indicated that fourteen states prohibited the verbal transmission of information about contraception or abortion, while eleven others made possession of instructions for the prevention of pregnancy a criminal offense.[2]

Page of the Morning Oregonian, published in June 1916. “Censorship is Attacked.”

But this did not stop Sanger and the American Birth Control League from mailing out the Review, though it probably had some impact the kinds of material the journal published. The main goal of the Review was to secure public support for birth control, to attract the support of doctors, legislators, academics, and the middle class and wealthy society women who formed the backbone of local birth control leagues.

This is where the undertones of eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism come in.

Sanger understood that there needed to be political accommodation in order to publish material on birth control. The Comstock Act, along with similar state laws, still existed. So Sanger and her supporters had to find a way to disseminate the information that they needed to without engaging in a full on battle with the law.

The answer lay in appealing to a greater audience and breaking their belief that birth control was a taboo. This audience was the white middle and upper classes.

But why would the BCR want to reach these classes? Were not most of the writings concerned with the impoverished classes, the women who could not afford to have undesired children?

In Sanger’s autobiography, My Fight for Birth Control, she writes:

The answer was to make the club women, the women of wealth and intelligence, use their power and money and influence to obtain freedom and knowledge for the women of the poor. The women of leisure must listen. The women of wealth must give. The women of influence must protest.

(p. 191)

Sanger concluded that although it was working class women who needed the most aid, it was the “club women” who would have the necessary influence and resources to promote the birth control movement.

Although the article demonstrates that the subject of eugenics in the BCR was a matter of tactic, it is important to note that
for Sanger, eugenics wasn’t just a strategy.

Eugenic theory developed in the United States during the early twentieth century. Individuals, including Margaret Sanger, believed that there were certain ways to promote a healthier population. Sanger, in particular, established ideas on when women should avoid giving birth. These ideas included women being at least 22 years old so that she can “attain a ripe physical and mental development” and when she is working since “society remains indifferent to the needs of her offspring and forces them to toil in mills and factories.

(Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, p.243-244)

The BCR was a magazine serving as a publication to discuss the justifications of birth control.[3] The upper class readers of these stories would have emotional reactions to reading the unfortunate stories and letters of poor women.[4]

By speaking to this audience, the topic of birth control would be public and legal with social changes could come to fruition.

What this audience tended to want to hear during this time were discussions on eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism.

These topics concerned the strengthening of gene pools and the controlling of overpopulation, respectively. More importantly, the supporters of both were concerned with quality over quantity.[5]

Does this sound familiar?

Quite. Think about the BCR and the birth control movement in general. The primary goals included decreasing the number of undesired births in poorer populations in order to improve the quality of life for the poorer families.

Now, Sanger and the BCR editors had to be careful about using eugenics to further promote birth control in the public sphere. The idea was not to make greater white middle and upper class families, rather, the intersection of these movements was to support the idea to ensure that families had the right to control the size of their family and that women had the right to control their bodies.[6]

The following excerpt describes the general perspective on eugenics in the birth control movement:

Margaret Sanger and leaders of the birth control movement, predominantly women, believed that people should be empowered, by education, to make choices to limit their own reproduction. In a society that frowned on open discussion of sexuality and where physicians knew little about the biology of reproduction, Sanger advocated that mothers be given access to the scientific information needed to thoughtfully plan conception.

The conclusion of this intersection, in the perspective of the BCR, was that the access to knowledge about contraceptives and effective family spacing would give women the ability to “eliminate the unfit [population].”[7]

Cover of the BCR published in February 1926. Slogan, “Fewer Children Better Born,” suggests that birth control would lead to a healthier population.

In addition to addressing the question of increasing an “unfit” population, there was the question of overpopulation.

Neo-Malthusians supported using scientific advancement, in this case birth control, to impede the growing world population as it was assumed to be constrained by inadequate food production.

Sanger, after hearing a speech given by Frank Vanderlip concerning the growing population of Europe and their possible reliance on American food sources, saw the potential in incorporating this argument in the birth control movement.[8]

Though Murphree and Gower emphasize that the inclusion of Neo-Malthusian ideals was a way to reach a broader range of supporters, it is important to understand that Margaret Sanger’s ideas had been influenced by the Neo-Maltusian movement. In 1914, Sanger found herself in England being introduced to the leaders of the Malthusian League. This is where she first learned of the advocacy for using artificial contraception to control population growth. The League’s program gave Sanger new arguments that would increase the appeal of the legalization of birth control
(Vol 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, p. 94.)

So you see? Both the incorporation of eugenics and neo-Malthusian ideas were also communication tactics!

Sanger effectively used the appeal of the eugenics and overpopulation movements to further the birth control movement.

What was the BCR able to communicate with these associations?

Everything converged to demonstrate that birth control would give women the liberty to control their bodies and therefore, control the number of children they had. This would naturally lead to a healthier population.

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In 2013, we live in a society where contraceptive use is common by both men and women. Margaret Sanger’s efforts had a lot to do with that, as she worked to make available and accessible a wide range of contraceptive methods. But Sanger focused on woman-controlled contraceptives and was reluctant to trust men to take precautions. What would Sanger say to the news that a birth control pill for men that has no major side effects could soon be available?

In an ideal society, no doubt, birth control would become the concern of the man as well as the woman. The hard, inescapable fact which we encounter to-day is that man has not only refused any such responsibility, but has individually and collectively sought to prevent woman from obtaining knowledge by which she could assume this responsibility for herself. She is still in the position of a dependent to-day because her mate has refused to consider her as an individual apart from his needs. She is still bound because she has in the past left the solution of the problem to him. Having left it to him, she finds that instead of rights, she has only such privileges as she has gained by petitioning, coaxing and cozening. Having left it to him, she is exploited, driven and enslaved to his desires. (“A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?,” March 1919)

Sanger would no doubt be pleased with recent advances in the availability of birth control in this country. Sex education for both boys and girls is offered at public schools and birth control devices are explained and encouraged. And while there have been many improvements in woman-controlled contraceptives, until now, men still primarily rely on the condom, the most popular method in Sanger’s day. Sanger didn’t trust condoms, not so much because she thought they were ineffective, but because they relied on men.

She has learned that whatever the moral responsibility of the man in this direction may be, he does not discharge it. She has learned that, lovable and considerate as the individual husband may be, she has nothing to expect from men in the mass, when they make laws and decree customs. She knows that regardless of what ought to be, the brutal, unavoidable fact is that she will never receive her freedom until she takes it for herself. (“A Parent’s Problem or a Woman’s?,” 1919.

The idea that women needed to take charge of family planning was a new one. Sanger’s experiences working with married women with six, seven or eight children was that their husbands did not want to limit the family or did not want any interference in their pleasure. Most of her campaign centered on the idea that women needed to be the primary decision makers because she wanted women to assert control as they were the one primarily affected.

While it is true that he suffers many evils as the consequence of this situation, she suffers vastly more. While it is true that he should be awakened to the cause of these evils, we know that they come home to her with crushing force every day. It is she who has the long burden of carrying, bearing and rearing the unwanted children. It is she who must watch beside the beds of pain where lie the babies who suffer because they have come into overcrowded homes. It is her heart that the sight of the deformed, the subnormal, the undernourished, the overworked child smites first and oftenest and hardest. It is her love life that dies first in the fear of undesired pregnancy. It is her opportunity for self expression that perishes first and most hopelessly because of it. (“Parent’s Problem or a Woman’s?, 1919)

The possibility of a male birth control pill will force women to ask themselves, despite still having to carry and care for the child, is it time for women to begin to trust men in regards to birth control?

A team led by Martin Matzuk of Baylor College of Medicine and James Bradner of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute believe they have stumbled on a potential birth control pill. While testing a drug that would be used in anti-cancer treatments, they have created a drug that controls fertility in men. Tests have only been done on mice at this point, but results show a rapid decrease in sperm production and mobility, and virtually zero side effects. And most importantly, the mice immediately begin producing sperm again once off the drug.

If a birth control pill for men does become available in the upcoming years, it may change the way both genders view contraceptives. Questions will arise for both genders. The pill would be a less permanent alternative to a vasectomy, so married men not interested in having any more children would accept it with arms wide open. But will younger, single men want to take this pill or will a feminine stigma be attached to the pill? We know that Margaret Sanger would not approve of women relying on men, but will women today trust their significant other to take his pill daily when he may not even remember to take out the trash?

In 1919, Sanger asserted that “Conditions, rather than theories, facts, rather than dreams, govern the problem. They place it squarely upon the shoulders of woman.” (“A Parent’s Problem or a Woman’s?”) The development of a male birth control pill will change the conditions under which men and women make family planning decisions. Will women begin trusting their husbands and partners, and give up using the existing woman-controlled methods, many of which have serious side effects? Will men accept the responsibility for family planning in the 21st century and prove Sanger wrong? Only time will tell.

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